Contact: Dan Dempsey at dempsey_dan@yahoo.com .......
The Math Underground is part of a national coalition, originated by NYC HOLD. .. a coalition of groups of citizens NOT vested in continually reinventing the wheel in order to justify our own existence, jobs or expertise. ........ Check the Blog list for Seattle Math Group.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

NMAP aftershock - Edu-Speakers speak

It appears that the National Math Advisory Panel report has ruffled some of the feathers of those who support entrenched edu-speak views.

Terri has 3 memory sticks a 4GB, a 2GB and a 1GB. She has several games scattered amongst them and have added up how much free space there is between them. It is enough to get one last game on there but the question is whether I can re arrange the existing files in such a way that I will be able to create just that one big space on one of the sticks. Help Terri by choosing the file size that would be best, and explain your reasoning.

This reminds of a piece of AERA research I read today regarding a new fish adaptation.

According to math education researchers, female mosquito fish preferred to join shoals that were larger by just one fish, 'preferring shoals of four fish rather than three fish, and consistently preferring shoals of three fish over those containing just two.'"

This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys, dolphins, and humans with very limited mathematical ability.

"We have provided the first evidence that fish exhibit rudimentary mathematical abilities."

A month ago, I wrote enrollment in Washington was down 50,000 students and today I check enrollment and sure enough its back up to last year's level.

SPS blog reported on Gregoire's cuts in I-728 and wrote "funding remains flat, despite a 'spike' in enrollment SPS enrollment is actually down (officially flat) at SPS - and so is Washington State's enrollment. So what are they talking aobut? Am I missing something?

The librarian told me today that officially our district dropout rate is 17%, but unofficially she says its 33%.